On 8th September 2023 the Gloucester 1682 Trust’s Chairman General Lord Richard Dannatt welcomed Dominic Jones CEO of the Mary Rose Trust to Norwich Castle. Dominic was then shown round the exhibition ‘The Last Voyage of the Gloucester, 1682: Norfolk’s Mary Rose’ by the wreck’s finders Julian Barnwell and Lincoln Barnwell from Norfolk Historic Shipwrecks, exhibition co-curator Professor Claire Jowitt of the University of East Anglia, and Dr Garry Momber of Maritime Archaeology Trust.
The Gloucester project team was delighted with Dominic’s reaction to learning more about the Barnwell brothers’ discovery in 2007, the historical significance of the voyage in 1682, and the warship and its artefacts. ‘What an amazing day! Wow just wow!! My heart is still beating’ Dominic commented in a tweet later that day, adding ‘It all started with a brick without a frog in it and AC/DC but what a breath of a story! Churchill, Washington, James II, Charles II and more wine bottles than you can imagine. I just loved it’.
Dominic and his team at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard are hosting a return visit later in October for trustees of the Gloucester 1682 Trust, Norfolk Historic Shipwrecks, and research partners from the University of East Anglia. This visit will provide a learning opportunity for the trustees with a behind-the-scenes tour of Britain’s world-renown, most successful shipwreck museum as well as offering an opportunity to discuss future collaborative projects concerning the Mary Rose and the Gloucester wreck.
